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In sports writing circles, there’s an unwritten rule that says you can’t be a fan. So no matter how great the play is, or when the team you cover wins a championship, you don’t cheer, clap or even smile. Just open your laptop and tell the story.

Sports fans buy their tickets and walk through the gates to every game with one key ingredient: hope that their team wins. But there is also a great opportunity for fans to learn a great deal and use sports philosophies.

Forty-eight hours into his life as the former head coach of the Edmonton Eskimos, Kavis Reed doesn’t appear to be mourning what was. Reed was fired on Monday after three Canadian Football League seasons on the job and on the heels of a 4-14 record that dropped his overall mark to 22-32.

For Kavis Reed, it was a cruel coincidence that the Edmonton Eskimos’ season ended Saturday against the Saskatchewan Roughriders. His past and present intersected at Mosiac Stadium, site of Reed’s two lowest moments as a coach in the Canadian Football League.

With athletes, it’s often said the legs go first, sometimes the hands. Or the confidence. The cause of the decline in performance may not be easy to pinpoint, at first, but the drop-off itself is easy to chart. With the pro sports franchises themselves, as led by the coaches, general managers, executives and owners, what erodes first to cause a downturn in fortunes?

Mary Manley is having another exciting day in her remarkable tennis career on Thursday, and she isn’t even playing. Manley, a tireless supporter of tennis programs for children, has been instrumental in running the Little Aces program, which came to Edmonton a year ago.

Edmonton Eskimos head coach Kavis Reed said that Wednesday is going to be “a huge moment” for his team. Exactly how huge that moment will be depends on how quarterback Mike Reilly fares in his medical testing Wednesday, after he sustained a concussion from a delayed hit in Saturday’s game against the Toronto Argonauts.

New Edmonton Oilers coach Dallas Eakins made news a few days ago when he rearranged some of the NHL team’s dressing room, moving a few things out. Eakins made no mention of the vacuum cleaner, and that only makes sense because Joey Moss is still operating the vacuum. While he might be considered a relic from the Oilers’ glory days, he is very much of the future.

The Edmonton Eskimos have been responsible, noble even, in owning their mistakes, their foibles, their losses so far this frustrating 1-6 CFL season. This has been acutely true of the last three defeats in their five-game losing streak, heartbreakers all, winnable games, every single one.

Kyle McDonald loves everything football — he plays touch football, he’s a member of the Edmonton Eskimos’ ‘fun team’ cheer squad and is the assistant equipment manager for the Edmonton Wildcats junior football club. His involvement makes him part of the team. One of the boys, if you will.

In the wake of the end of a relationship, it’s the post-mortem get-togethers that are the hardest things to deal with. The run-ins at parties; the crossing of paths at the grocery store; the accidental third-wheel surprise on one parties’ date.

Left guard Miles Mason and centre Alexander Krausnick will get their first starts for the Eskimos on Sunday. Mason only signed with the team on Tuesday and Krausnick is in for the first time after hurting his knee early in training camp in June.

He vowed he’d be back at practice this week and Fred Stamps stuck to his word. The Edmonton Eskimos slotback took part in Tuesday’s practice after sitting out Saturday’s rainy 17-3 loss to the B.C. Lions.

As the Edmonton Eskimos prepare to welcome the B.C. Lions to Commonwealth Stadium on Saturday night, the focus first goes to the quarterbacks. Mike Reilly, the Eskimos’ starting quarterback, is in Edmonton because of Travis Lulay, the Lions’ starter. After two-plus seasons of serving as Lulay’s backup, Reilly wanted to play but knew Lulay was a fixture in Vancouver, removable only by injury.

The buzzword around the Edmonton Eskimos for the last six months has been unflappable. The buzzword is fused to the buzz position for the team after it came out of the 2012 Canadian Football League season in dire need of a starting quarterback.

It only seemed right that Edmonton city council finally approved the proposed downtown arena on a bright sunny day. With the arena deal done and the Edmonton Oilers and Oil Kings done for the season, it’s a great time to look to the summer and what’s on the horizon.

When the then-general manager of the Edmonton Eskimos traded Ray to the Toronto Argonauts in December last year, he bemoaned Ray’s poor play in the Canadian Football League’s West Division final. As Ray zipped the final seven yards into the end zone at Rogers Centre on Sunday afternoon against his former team, putting the Argos up by more than three touchdowns late in the first half of the East Division semifinal, he proudly held the ball up to the sky.

Edmonton – Edmonton head coach Kavis Reed has two huge decisions to make before the Eskimos meet the Toronto Argonauts in Sunday’s CFL East Division semifinal and both will have big impacts on the team’s offence. As the Eskimos continued their preparation Tuesday, the two big questions surrounding the team were who will start at quarterback and what’s the status of running back Hugh Charles.

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